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STRONY

Chanel - part I

Christopher sent me recently an excellent interview with Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, where Pavlovsky discusses business strategies of the ultimate French house of luxury. Chanel is a privately held company owned by media-shy Wertheimer family, who guard very closely Chanel's financials. I have been exposed to American media for more than a decade and not even once have I stumbled upon any kind of information about Chanel's financials. There are always news about all the recent collections and fashion shows and stories about Karl Lagerfeld but almost nothing about the company from financial and business point of view. Therefore, I find the article from Christopher particularly valuable. As a privately held company, there are no disclosure requirements, no shareholders and no quarterly reports and the exact figure of the company's revenues is not known to the public. Some analysts estimate the value of Chanel to be between 8 and 11 or even 15 billion USD.

Pavlovsky discusses first the idea of being a brand that's traditional but at the same time modern and contemporary: "Today, Chanel is perhaps one of the most successful business models based on creativity. We let these creative people go to the next step in designing the collection. And, on the other hand, we maximize the impact of the collection at every point of sale".

Within last few years Chanel has been acquiring several ateliers and small fashion companies. Quite recently it became the owner of Scottish cashmere producer- Barrie knitwear. Before that, famous fashion house bought embroiderer Lesage, glove-maker Causse, exclusive hat-maker A. Michel et Cie, a stake in luxury watchmaker Bell & Ross and Lemarie, specializing in feather and flower decorations and crafts. Pavlovsky claims that all the acquisitions were made in a good faith in order to protect valuable heritage skills and safeguard their future. It is probably true but we shall remember that Chanel is acquiring monopoly on embroidery and other skills. There was a short article in one of the newspapers few weeks ago, where the writer compared Chanel to Swatch. Apparently Swatch owns many factories specializing in complicated mechanisms, used by many high-end brands, like Rolex. Eventually Swatch decided to limit access to the mechanisms and sell them to only a few selected brands, putting the other watch companies in a very difficult situation. The point of the comparison was that Chanel might eventually do the same by limiting the access to the ateliers owned by them.

Pavlovsky discusses the role ateliers play at Chanel: "A collection is a 6 week cycle. To be able to do this development in such a short time, we need to have the people available and ready. Quite often it is a long partnership, a long relationship. What we have done is to give them the chance to focus on the creative aspect of what they are doing. And, they are not only working for Chanel. They are also working for a lot of other brands. Each of them have a specific role, specific knowledge; they have a specific story, a specific archive. And it's quite interesting for us to fulfill the studio with all of these competencies. For us, at Chanel, it is a guarantee that this creativity can continue to exist for the next 50 years. What we have done is to give them the resources to be able to work with new talents and to train people. And now, what I appreciate the most is when you visit all these ateliers, you see a lot of young people. So in fact, you can find people".

Pavlovsky wspomina o tym, że Chanel jest nowoczesną marką o wieloletnich i pięknych tradycjach: "Today, Chanel is perhaps one of the most successful business models based on creativity. We let these creative people go to the next step in designing the collection. And, on the other hand, we maximize the impact of the collection at every point of sale".

O roli, jaką odgrywają owe atelier u Chanel, Pavlovsky mówi w następujący sposob: "A collection is a 6 week cycle. To be able to do this development in such a short time, we need to have the people available and ready. Quite often it is a long partnership, a long relationship. What we have done is to give them the chance to focus on the creative aspect of what they are doing. And, they are not only working for Chanel. They are also working for a lot of other brands. Each of them have a specific role, specific knowledge; they have a specific story, a specific archive. And it's quite interesting for us to fulfill the studio with all of these competencies. For us, at Chanel, it's a guarantee that this creativity can continue to exist for the next 50 years. What we have done is to give them the resources to be able to work with new talents and to train people. And now, what I appreciate the most is when you visit all these ateliers you see a lot of young people. So in fact, you can find people".

My name is Magdalena. I'm a personal shopper, stylist and fashion blogger. I love classics and elegance, timeless forms and cutting. My biggest inspiration are Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Jackie Onassis . I'm a huge fan of fifties in fashion. My blog is a place where you can find my inspirations, beautiful places which I visited and all these things which I loved . This is a small window of my lifestyle.